Texting is a commonly used feature of electronic devices such as smartphones. Today's devices do not allow a user to easily or seamlessly access rich media or other interactive content while in the texting application. For example, when a user wishes to share rich media while texting, she must leave the texting application, navigate to the rich media, copy the link to the rich media, return to the texting application, paste the link into a text message, and send the message to a recipient. Given the number of steps involved, many users are less likely to share rich media. FIG. 1, for example, is a screen shot 100 of a chat session after a user has performed most of these steps, right before sending the message.
While the recipient is viewing the rich media, she cannot simultaneously exchange text messages with the sender. Instead, she must switch between the texting application and the media playing application, making it impossible to interact with the sender while both users are accessing the rich media. In short, the user is severely limited in the tasks she can perform while in the texting application.